Regulation and Voicing

I hope all of my clients are well aware that pianos ought to be tuned at least twice a year. This is the basic service, like getting your car’s oil changed. If that’s all you did, your vehicle would keep running, but over time you’ll notice the performance begins to suffer.

The same is true with your piano. Over time you find yourself not making music so easily- sure you can press all the notes and get to the end of your piece but you had to force the keys to make the proper dynamic and articulation. So you’re working harder just to get the desired sound and you aren’t able to focus on making it sound musical. Maybe there’s more than a little struggle with gently flowing passages or you notice some missing notes in a piece that offers a technical challenge.

Those are issues a mature musician can relate to, what about beginners and students?

Imagine teaching a young driver how to operate their vehicle but the car constantly pulls to the left because the alignment is off or there’s no power steering? There’s already so much to think about; new concepts, technique, tempo, rhythm, dynamics, even reading basic notes- to the beginner they’re all difficult without having to work against the piano.

Then we can consider the very young children and older adult musicians. If the keys are too difficult to press, tiny fingers can’t play and arthritic hands that once played beautifully become easily frustrated.

Recently, C.J.’s Pianos regulated and voiced a grand piano for a professional musician – he loved it so much that we received a call from his wife at 2am because he wouldn’t stop playing, it was as though he got a new instrument again, maybe better. Not too long before that a customer came to us wanting to sell their piano because they couldn’t play anymore, making music became too difficult, we regulated the piano and now him and his grand-daughter play duets, the little girl will be inheriting the instrument.

If all we ever do for you is tune we’ll be happy to provide that service, but we really want to enable you to be better musicians. Sometimes sounding better at the piano means making the piano play better so the pianist can become a better player.